. I'd also be curious to know
just how many people made it to the end of this review, which is
long even by my standards.

Rating: 80%
Written By: Rorschach
Game Over Online - http://www.game-over.com

So, last month I was like Captain RTS with Earth 2150 and Dark
Reign 2, and now I've apparently mutated into Expansion-Pack
Lad with Cleopatra and this game, AOE2 - The Conquerors. Both
superheroes with very limited superpowers, but also completely
unaffected by Kryptonite (unless, I suppose, someone heaves a big
chunk at me like a rock), so who's laughing now, Superman?
They're good additions to my other superhero personae:
Dog-Walking Man and Lawn-Mowing Guy. Yup, world domination
any day now. My enemies coming to cower at my feet like the
insignificant, un-segmented insects that they are, to be swept aside
by a hail of righteous gunfire. Oooh. Oh yesssss.

Where was I? Oh yeah, this is a review of Diablo 1.4, the
expansion pack for Diablo which, through a completely
unpublicized printing error, arrived in stores in a box stamped
Diablo 2. Really. Would I lie? OK, I would, but not to my mother,
and definitely not on her deathbed. All those who find Diablo 2 in
any way distinguishable from Diablo other than length, please
grunt and scratch your brow ridges, as that's pretty much all you're
capable of doing. Having touched off that flame war, I do at some
point have to get down to the business of reviewing the AOE2
expansion pack.

But allow me to digress once more, as if you had any choice in the
matter. Back however many years ago it was that AOE came out, I
was in utter dread at the thought of Microsoft making games. I
mean, they had already made Fury3 and Hellbender and Monster
Truck Madness and a couple of others, but I didn't see those as
serious games - they were really just marketing tools to package
with their joysticks and driving wheels. But here came AOE,
joystick not included, and I had visions of jackbooted thugs
(Jackboots: What all the thugs on the go are wearing in the fall!
Jackboots say 'notice me' at any social event - wedding, Bar
Mitzvah, Brit.) showing up at my house to take away my copy of
Starcraft, or perhaps some bit of code in the Windows operating
system that would make AOE the only game that could be played.
What I'm trying to get across here, in my own convoluted and
largely unsuccessful manner, is that I saw gaming as something
clean and as yet unsullied by the taint of Microsoft - that Bill Gates
was going to force his way into the gaming universe so he could
firmly plant his $250 Gucci loafers into that realm as well (Does
anyone find it strange that Microsoft, Gates, and Gucci are all in
the Word dictionary?).

And then I actually played AOE, and I was astounded. It was not
only a good game, it was great. In an RTS universe where most
games collected gold or some wealth equivalent (though Warcraft
collected gold and wood), AOE collected gold, wood, stone, and
food. And that increase in complexity was everywhere in the
game. More unit types, a longer research tree with more
technologies, better unit animation, more buildings to build, and
(though some may disagree with me here) a better than average
unit AI. It had a depth of strategy that really hadn't been seen in
RTS games and it was enough to make some people put down
their copies of Starcraft and Total Annihilation.

Then AOE2 arrived, and it was so much more than AOE with a
more units and buildings and races, and an even longer research
tree, and more. Most significantly, and I feel a need to point this
out because so many RTS games get it wrong, unit pathfinding
was well done. Large groups of units rarely spent time colliding
with each other and getting caught up in the trees and rocks. And
Bill Gates smiled upon his creation and saw that it was good, but it
was not entirely without flaws. Almost immediately, fans began
asking for a patch. There were some race imbalance issues in
multiplayer, they wanted unit formations for navel units, and
villagers that wouldn't just stand around when nearby there were
resources to gather. There was also a massive slowdown problem
when a large number of units were in the game, even on high-end
machines. A year went by, and no patch came out of the Microsoft
sweatshops. For others, and me, AOE2 fell out of favor. Microsoft
fell out of favor as well, but let's be honest here, it frankly didn't
have far to fall.

So now Microsoft has graced us with this expansion patch, er,
pack. OK, let me step back here for a second - I'm practically
working myself into a tizzy. AOE2: The Conquerors is really a very
good expansion pack. It brings in five new races (Hun, Aztec,
Mayan, Korean, and Spanish) during times in history that let you
"be" their greatest conquerors. OK, the "be" part is a little thin -
this isn't an RPG even in the Diablo sense. You control, say, Attila
the Hun like you would other units, but he must survive each
mission because if he dies, you fail. The missions let you sort of
experience the battles each of these races' leaders fought on their
way from the mailroom up the corporate ladder to conqueror
greatness. Each race brings with it a special technology and unit
as well as some minor unit bonuses. Do these differences make
the various races wildly different to play? No. But it does make
them feel different enough to hold your interest.

For those of you used to AOE2, The Conquerors isn't going to throw
you many surprises. It looks just like AOE2 as far as layout and
graphics are concerned. The graphics hold up pretty well given
their age. Units are colorful, well detailed, and well animated.
The new races bring with them new tile sets which look good, and
there are now tropical rainforest and snow covered grounds to
fight on (though weather is just eye candy - no tactical combat
effect). Under the sort of current standard of building with some
degree of animation as well, AOE2 buildings look a little still life.
Sounds likewise aren't going to knock anyone's socks off.

Complaints? I've got a few (don't I always?). For one, missions
have become more complex with mission objectives that change
as the mission proceeds. That's not a complaint - I like that. The
game handles these plot events by taking control of you units and
marching them around with text and spoken dialog - like a movie
using the game engine. The problem is knowing when the game
is in control of your units and when you are. I've had units beaten
half to death not realizing that the movie was over and that I
should be controlling them. Dark Reign 2 pulled the screen down
to a letterbox format when the game engine movies were playing,
and restored it to full size when you were playing - something like
that should have been done here.

The major complaint that I'm going to keep harping on until Bill
Gates comes to my house and apologizes personally (which might
be awhile, so you might want to get comfortable) is that included
in this very good expansion pack is what amounts to a patch for
AOE2. Their 'you want us to clean up some gameplay issues for
AOE2, you've got to buy the expansion pack' attitude gripes my
cookies. Total Annihilation and Starcraft didn't pull this crap. The
only thing that keeps me from utterly savaging this expansion pack
in my review for this very reason is that I suspect the people who
were asking for the patch liked AOE2 enough to want what the
expansion pack offers beyond the patch, which is quite a lot. New
races, new units, new technologies, and 4 new single player
scenarios offer some extensive play time. The sort of casual AOE2
player probably didn't care if the game was patched or not, and
they're not likely to buy the expansion pack anyway. Still, bad
customer service as a whole. And while I'm on the subject, I think
the Spanish Conquistadors are going to cause some more
imbalance problems in multiplayer gaming. True to history, in the
rock-paper-scissors-semiautomatic handgun pecking order, it's the
firepower that wins out, and the Spanish were able to wreak
havoc on populations of spear throwers and archers with just a few
gunmen, but from a multiplayer gaming perspective, the Spanish
are high in the kickass factor. Are we going to see patch for that?
We'll see.

The final thought that I'm going to leave you all with is one that I'm
still kind of ruminating on myself, and really only came to me as I
wrote this review. AOE2 has, uh, 13 races I think, and now there
are 18 with the expansion. There were about 100 technologies in
the tree before, and now there are like 112 or more. The idea I'm
kind of kicking around is that maybe we've crossed some point of
diminishing returns. If 13 races is good, is 18 necessarily better
even if they play pretty much the same? If so, would another 10
races be better still? Maybe I'm just not a hardcore enough player
of AOE2. Realistically, Cleopatra and The Conquerors are much
the same expansion pack - a few gameplay additions, and some
new scenarios. The only difference is that Microsoft left me angry
for not patching AOE2 sooner, while Pharaoh was supported all
along.

More to the point perhaps, does the AOE2 expansion pack make
AOE2 a better game (beyond the patching issues)? Is it even the
role of an expansion pack to make a game better, or just to extend
the gaming experience? I'd be curious to hear what opinion
people have on this subject, and maybe I'll bang out a column on
the role of expansion packs in the modern gaming world: quick
buck for the publisher while working on the sequel, or legitimate
gaming experience? Drop me a line. I'd also be curious to know
just how many people made it to the end of this review, which is
long even by my standards.